What do you do when it rains? (Part II)

I went for a ride this morning, and it was raining. I stayed in the garage for like, ten minutes, trying to see if the rain was going to let up. But it didn’t.

This is the start of the first ride. I am no wet yet, so I was grumpy.

So I went for a ride anyway, and the first mile was rough, but then once I got totally soaked, the rest of the ride was like being thirteen again, and being in a water gun fight.

I have always really liked water gun fights.

One thing though: The potholes fill up with water, so that you don’t really recognize them as potholes, and then when you smash into them, you get a bone-jarring shock and an explosion of water and pieces of worms.

It is especially bad on East River Road just south of the Franklin Ave. bridge. After riding through that section of road in the rain, I kind of feel I know what Vietnam must have been like.

When I got back from the ride, Steph and the kids were ready to go to an Easter egg hunt in Sibley park, about three miles away. Since we do not have a car, we were going to ride our bikes there.

Here is an important point: It was still raining pretty hard.

So I got some dry clothes on, and got ready to go out into the wet again.

I tried on some black pants first, but then put them back because they make my legs look like stovepipes, and I can’t figure out what kind of shoes go best with stovepipe legs.

Instead, I wore tan pants. “Chinos” is what they are technically called, which is a name that seems mildy racist. Sometimes they are also called “khaki’s”, which is a name that sounds like you have a cold. I call them “tan pants”

After two minutes outside the pants were soaked and dark brown. Steph noticed.

“Bill”, she said. “You should have stuck with the black pants.” Steph has black tights on. Her legs do not look like stovepipes. They look lithe and graceful. I do not try and explain the whole stovepipe thing. Instead, I nod my head and smile. “You are right” I say, “The black pants would not show the wet.”

Steph looks at me again. I am wearing a blue plaid shirt, with a fancy puffy vest I got from Target. Before I got wet, I thought I looked cool, like Marty McFly in the first Back to the Future, except with a black vest. Now my hair is pressed down onto my forehead and little rivulets of water are running down my collar. But in my mind, I am still pretty cool.

I am a handsome, handsome man. My mom tells me

“I am surprised you don’t have a rain jacket” Steph says.

I do have a rain jacket. I just lost it a couple of years ago, and I have not bought another one, because; 1) I am still a little embarrassed about losing the jacket, and I figure if I do not buy another jacket, I haven’t really lost it, I have just misplaced it; and 2) because rain jackets keep your torso dry, but they dump all of the water onto your pants. So with a rain jacket, you end up with a dry torso, but doubly wet pants, whereas, if you do not use a rain jacket, you are uniformly wet all over; and 3) rain jackets are expensive, and I am cheap.

Steph’s rain jacket is bright green, like her bike. Grant’s rain jacket is blue, and Darcy’s rain jacket has little flowers all over it. My rain jacket is red. If you see it, let me know.

This was not the van that splashed us. But it was like this van. except wetter, and covered in worm parts.

About two miles into the ride a panel van smashes into a lake in the middle of the road and waterfalls a plume of dirty water and worm parts onto Steph and I.

This can go two ways.

It goes the good way. Steph laughs out loud at the water fall, the biggest laugh I have heard her give in a while.

“Did that get you?” Steph asks, “Did that get you!?!” I peel a worm belly from my forehead. “No” I say, “It just missed me.”

Good News: Worm bellies are kind of tan, so it blends in pretty well with my pants. If I had worn my black pants, the worm bellies would have stood out. People would stare.

This is just shortly after the panel van doused us in dirty water and worm bellies.

After we got to the Easter Egg hunt, the rain stopped.

And it turned out we read the invite wrong, and we ended up being about two hours early. So if we had waited a bit, we could have ridden the whole way in the warm summer sun. We could have avoided the potholes, and the lakes in the middle of the road, and the worm parts.

Or, if I think about it a little bit, if we hadn’t gotten rid of our car we could have remained completely dry even if it was raining. And we would not even notice lakes in the middle of the road, or panel vans.